


The Marie Ivy Show

by Feneris



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Pokedex, headcannons, radio show, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 18:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6819379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feneris/pseuds/Feneris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Featuring guest speaker Professor Spruce. The show provides insight into the world we live in, and how history between humans and pokemon has shaped the world as we understand it today. </p>
<p>Today's feature: The Pokedex </p>
<p>(Basically a collection of headcannons and worldbuilding snippets I felt like posting.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Marie Ivy Show

**Author's Note:**

> I will state right now that I am most familiar with the pokemon world up to gen III. Bought a copy of Pokemon emerald for the GBA, and haven't really gone farther. So expect some information to be outdated, and for no mention to be made about pokemon beyond Gen III

**Marie:** To those of you just tuning in, this is the Xannon Regional Radio Station and this is the Marie Ivy Radio Show. Joining us today is local historian and archeologist Professor Spruce. Our topic today, the Pokedex and its impact on our understanding about pokemon. Thank you for joining us Professor. 

**Prof. Spruce:** Thank you for having me.

**Marie:** So, Professor, the Pokedex, it seems every trainer going out these days has one and for many it is an invaluable source of data on pokemon. It almost seems hard to imagine a world without it. 

**Prof. Spruce:** It certainly seems that way doesn’t it. You almost forget that the Pokedex itself is only twenty years old. Yet it in that time it has proven itself an invaluable tool to pokemon research across all fields.

**Marie:** How so Professor? I mean for most trainers that Pokedex is certainly a good source of information, but it can’t really tell them anything pokemon researchers like you haven’t already discovered, can it? 

**Prof. Spruce:** On the contrary. The pokedex is more of a data gathering tool than an encyclopedia. You see, every time a trainer catches a pokemon, the pokedex gathers an array of data on it and sends that data to an open-access database that anyone can access. This includes things such as the pokemon’s species, it’s size and weight, where it was caught, etc. Every pokemon caught by a trainer with a pokedex is actually contributing to our research data on pokemon.

**Marie:** So these trainers are actually participating in pokemon research?

**Prof. Spruce:** They’re invaluable part of research actually. Much of the data pokemon researchers use today has been gathered by pokemon trainers using their pokedex. And that more than anything really is what makes the pokedex so influential today. 

**Marie:** How so?

**Prof. Spruce:** Well, to really answer that, we have to go back twenty years ago before the pokedex had been invented. Many young trainers may have a hard time imagining it, but back in those days it was really hard to communicate and travel between regions. This was all before the wire-less phone, the magna-rail between Kanto and Johto, the regular ferry services to Hoenn didn’t exist, and you probably remember when Xannon Region’s only contact with the outside world was a ship that came twice a year if we were lucky.

**Marie:** Indeed, it seems like so long ago. But yes, that right, we really used to be cut off back then.

**Prof. Spruce:** Well, back in those days, pokemon researchers didn’t really communicate with each other very well. It used to be really hard to send any kind of a message anywhere outside your own region. While there was a lot of research going on back then, you tended to have a lot of researchers working on identical projects or rediscovering facts that had already been tried and tested in other regions. 

Now, one of the big questions back then was issue of exactly how many types of pokemon there were. You had dozens of researchers all doing surveys of pokemon populations, and most of them were concluding that there was at most maybe fifty different types of pokemon in the world, give or take one or two that may have been missed. 

**Marie:** Fifty at most!?

**Prof. Spruce:** Sounds hard to believe today, but back then it was extremely hard for one researcher, even with assistants, to gather data and do an accurate survey of an area. What was even harder was developing a way of verifying and confirming claims. Some of the entries in those first censuses were only known by brief and fragmented glimpses. There was even one man who mistook a hedge blowing in the wind for a new type of grass pokemon. At the time fifty types of pokemon seemed like a pretty safe bet. 

Then people started comparing and compiling different accounts and censuses, and suddenly you have researchers claiming that the numbers are actually much greater, maybe even as high as a hundred. You even have a young Professor Oak claiming that the actual count may go as high as a hundred and fifty. It sparked this huge controversy at the time, with a lot of eminent professors stating that such high numbers were gross exaggerations and that many of the different types were actually misidentifications or outright imaginary. 

So the debate rages on. Meanwhile Professor Oak is working on a new project, a way to work with the pokemon digital storage system and gather data non-invasive data on captured pokemon. On a whim, he packages everything up into a neat little device the size of your hand and adds an encyclopedia feature. 

**Marie:** The pokedex right?

**Prof. Spruce:** I still have one of those first pokedexs believe it or not. Professor Oak was giving out prototypes at a conference I once attended when I was still a graduate student. But the thing is, Professor Oak wasn’t just giving this new invention out to fellow researchers. He was also giving it to young pokemon trainers just starting out with their first pokemon. From what I understand, the way he figured, those trainers could go out and collect extra data for him while they went on their own pokemon journeys, with no hassle or extra effort on their part. He honestly wasn’t expecting much beyond maybe a better map of pokemon distributions in Kanto.

**Marie:** But it was more than that right?

**Prof. Spruce:** I don’t think anyone, least of all Professor Oak himself, was actually expecting the torrent of data that suddenly poured in from pokemon trainers all over the region. The old count of fifty pokemon types is just blown right out of the water. We’re even getting confirmed, undeniable records of pokemon that previously everyone had thought were mere legends, and some types we never even imagined existed. 

Merely a year after releasing the pokedex, Professor Oak stands up at a conference in Vermillion City and announces that there are over a hundred and fifty pokemon, and he can name and identify every single one of them. 

**Marie:** But it didn’t stop at a hundred and fifty did it? 

**Prof. Spruce:** A few years later, Professor Oak starts working with pokemon professors in Johto to distribute pokedexs to trainers in that region. Suddenly the total count jumps by another hundred species, and we add two who new elemental types types to the charts. It was a similar story when the pokedex was released in Hoenn, and again in Sinnoh and Unova. The last count I saw was well over six hundred, and I have no doubt it is still going up.

**Marie:** And that’s all because of the pokedex?

**Prof. Spruce:** As well as all the pokemon trainers who head out into the world with their pokedex. I have two sons, and I swear they’ve gathered more data on pokemon since they started their own pokemon journeys, than I ever gathered in my ten years as a student doing serious research at university. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Modern pokemon research owes and invaluable debt to all those trainers carrying pokedexs. Much of the cutting edge research being done today just simply wouldn’t be possible without all the data that has been gathered with the pokedex since its invention.

**Marie:** That’s amazing. I never would have imagined that the pokedex was so important to pokemon research.

**Prof. Spruce:** Neither, I suspect, did Professor Oak.

**Marie:** Thank you for taking the time to talk to us Professor. It was an honor having you on our show.

**Prof. Spruce:** It was my pleasure to be here.


End file.
